


You taste of sour cherry jam

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Auror Harry Potter, Blackmail, Cheating, Choking, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Guilt, Infidelity, Jealousy, Light Angst, M/M, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Mind Games, Multi, Possessive Harry Potter, Possessive Tom Riddle, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Quidditch Player Ginny Weasley, Seduction, Sensuality, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Student Tom Riddle, Voyeurism, intimacy kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:07:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24064792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Maybe Harry made a mistake when he agreed to let Tom Riddle stay in his and Ginny's spare room, though, it was entirely his fault that Tom no longer had a job; it was just, he'd never imagined that such a small act of kindness would lead to such a big problem.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle/Ginny Weasley, Tom Riddle/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 17
Kudos: 116





	1. Chapter 1

Harry sat alone in the sitting room, just watching the clock. The space was quiet, almost unnervingly so, and it left too much room for thought, and all his thoughts were decidedly inappropriate. Harry glanced up at the clock again; it was almost six, and Tom always arrived back here—home—at six. He swallowed and shifted again, moving his weight from one leg to the other, frustrated. 

He had made a mistake. 

A big mistake. 

And it had all started at work with an anonymous tip-off. Just a tiny little tip-off that Borgin and Burke were dealing in stolen property—it had been a petty charge and hardly the one that they had wanted, but unlike everything else that the Aurors had ever attempted, it might actually stick. So, Harry had done what any decent Auror would do, he’d followed procedure, he’d investigated, and they’d found exactly what they were looking for. 

But, of course, nothing was ever that _simple_ , and someone hadn’t been doing their job properly because they didn’t even know that anyone else was hired in the shop until they had found Tom doing some administrative work in the backroom. But, then again, both Borgin and Burke were hardly known for their generosity, so whilst discovering an employee being paid off the books and thoroughly below the minimum wage was unfortunate, it was hardly unexpected. 

Either way, by Harry’s own actions, he’d essentially put a perfectly decent student out of their part-time—though knowing Borgin and Burke it was more likely full-time—job, and without his job how was Tom supposed to pay rent, and if he couldn’t pay rent how was he supposed to study properly?

So, really, it had been a matter of common decency to offer Tom a room until he could find somewhere with more affordable rent, which, Harry had realised as soon as he’d offered was unlikely to be anytime soon. But he’d stuck with the offer, and Tom had moved in less than a week later, and that was when the problem began; and that problem was why now, Harry was sitting here, tapping fingers on the arm of the sofa and waiting for Tom to come through that door so they could talk this out like adults. 

Because it was frankly pathetic that he’d let this…non-entity, go on for this long, let alone allowing it to fester any longer, otherwise, it might start to swell out of his control, subsuming everything he thought and everything he did. 

So, Harry was going to prune the bud before it bloomed. 

In part, because he could already feel the petals unfurling themselves in his stomach, and making he want things he shouldn’t—things like Tom Riddle. Back at the beginning, it had been fine; Tom largely kept to himself, although he tended to join them for meals when he was home and always joined them in the evenings. In many ways, it was nice to have the extra company, and the extra conversation, especially when one of them was working particularly late

There were, of course, teething problems—namely that Tom had forgotten (more than once) to lock the door when he had a bath, but he’d been living on his own for four years, so it was a completely understandable mistake. And that Tom had a habit of flashing him ephemeral, but absolutely gorgeous smiles over dinner, but that was just friendliness, and, not to mention, that Tom’s fingers had a tendency to wander—always brushing against Harry’s back more than they needed to, but they were just teething problems, weren’t they?

It was just the three of them trying to configure their newly integrated lives.

But if it was just innocent configuring, why did Harry feel so guilty for even looking at Tom? Because he did feel guilty, and it wasn’t the same guilt as he’d felt when Tom lost his income; that had been sad and soulful, whilst this was hot and intense, eating up his insides and leaving his palms itching and a restlessness under his skin that he just couldn’t get out, no matter how much he worked or trained or distracted himself. 

Tom had gotten under his skin. 

And it was all so frankly ridiculous because Harry was a well-adjusted adult, who was just a shadow off thirty, with a blossoming career, not to mention he was quite happily married to his childhood sweetheart and had been for nearly a year now. He had no need for anything or anyone else, or at least, he hadn’t had until Tom, and, in particular, one day that was burned into his brain and would be until he died. 

It had been an innocent mistake because he was tired and had come home early from a particularly awful case that had had a painful and somewhat devasting conclusion, so he hadn’t heard the faint hum of mild privacy wards or felt the tingle on his skin as he pushed through the charms to open the door of Tom’s room to ask if he was busy and if he wanted tea.

Well, he’d certainly been busy. 

Tom had been sitting on the edge of his bed, one hand behind him, supporting his weight, his head tilted back so that his features caught the skittering light, which only seemed to emphasise the speckled blush blotting his throat as someone put their mouth to good use between his thighs. For a moment, Harry had just stared, drinking in the colours and the shadows and even the smell because that had been the closest, he’d ever seen Tom being vulnerable; his eyes had been closed and his lips were parted and the soft crest of his throat was entirely exposed and he’d looked so… defenceless. 

He _was_ going to leave. 

To pretend that he’d never seen anything. 

But Tom had opened his eyes and split the moment wide open. Though far from telling him to get out, Tom had held his gaze, steady and firm, even letting a smile pull at the corner of his mouth as he bit down on his lip and yanked the hair of his companion back and hard and making them groan, and Harry had almost groaned with him. His hands had been wrapped so tightly around the doorframe that he knuckles had hurt for hours afterwards and he was sure that his nails had left behind faint prints in the softwood. 

It was wrong, but Tom just looked so good with his hair falling in his eyes and his head tipping back further, even as he kept his eyes firmly on Harry’s own. They had stayed like that for too long, watching each other intently even as Tom’s breathing had come faster and tighter, and his fingers were gripping harder at his companion’s hair; the heel of his right foot digging hard into his spine. It was after too long that Harry had turned to leave, but just as he was sliding back out the door, Tom inhaled sharply; _“don’t you dare,”_ he’d hissed, rougher and more breathless than usual—the clipped tones of his artificially refined accent failing him for a moment.

So, Harry had stayed, even with the guilt churning in his stomach. 

Things had undeniably changed after that, and, no matter what he did, Harry couldn’t quite erase the spiking ache he felt whenever he was around Tom; something heavy curling white-hot at the base of his spine every time he thought of Tom, even doing the most mundane things. Tom poring over his textbooks whilst curled up in their spare chair—his face dipped in shadows and his eyes glittering; Tom smiling over a cup of tea as he leaned so easily against the sink—clever repartee dripping off his tongue like melted chocolate; Tom half-naked and unbearably gorgeous—slicked with soap suds and lounging in the bath, his legs tipped over the edge and his skin soft and pink. 

He couldn’t get Tom out of his head, and now he had to deal with it. 

Harry swallowed and glanced at the clock again. It was now six, and, as though he was synced to the clock, the sound of the door could be heard opening and closing, followed by the shuffle of feet. Harry turned. In the hallway, still obscured by the door and shadows, he could just about make out the shape of Tom removing his shoes.

Less than a minute later, he was stepping out of the shadows and Harry could see him properly, though, he almost wished he couldn’t. For Tom was one of those people that age treated kindly, nurturing his looks, and every year fine-tuning them to more closely align with perfection. The cut of his face and the angles that it created were as hypnotic as they were intense and on any other face, they might have seemed too much, but Tom wore intensity well, from his eyes to his demeanour, intensity defined him. 

Today it was only worsened by the fact he was wearing one of the jumpers that they’d bought him, as yet another extended apology on Harry’s part—though, technically—Ginny had bought him this particular one. Red and woollen and so close-fitting that it showed off every inch of him, and Tom wore it shamelessly

The wine colour of the material brought out a glow in his eyes, just this rich, red-stained rim surrounding the pupil that made Harry shudder, and a healthiness to Tom’s skin that meant Harry couldn’t stop himself staring. Always watching Tom and taking in the strong line of his spine, and the confident way he carried himself—as though he was untouchable. Maybe he was. After all, Tom had this way of talking that compelled you to listen. 

“Is Ginevra home?” Tom asked, even before greeting Harry himself, and all the while adding a deliberate emphasis to the offending word, even as he so casually hung up his jacket; alongside theirs, a testament to how gravely enmeshed their lives had become so quickly.  
He always called her Ginevra—at first, Ginny had tried to correct him, but just recently she said she rather liked her name when it was on Tom’s tongue; something to do with the way he pronounced his vowels—the lethargic inflection that spilled from his mouth when he wasn’t paying proper attention—the one that said Tom wasn’t who he pretended to be.

“No,” Harry said quietly, unwilling to be drawn into one of Tom’s discussions that were really just him baiting, and seeing how it took for one of them told him to cut it out. “She’s training,” he added by way of casual excuse, as though he hadn’t come home from work early to specifically meet Tom when Ginny was out of the house. 

“That’s convenient.”

Harry swallowed, “she always trains on Mondays,” he said, carefully.

Tom cocked an eyebrow at him. “Still convenient,” he said with all the petulance of a teenager, picking a peach up from the bowl on the table and wandering over. Harry watched Tom feel its weight in his palm and rub at the fuzz with his thumb; it collected in small, soft, rolls under the pad. There was a viciousness to the movement, even if Tom continued to smile like something had got under his skin and was agitating him. 

“Tom,” he said in the strongest tone he dared to use against someone he wanted to keep peace with, “we need to talk.” The second part was spoken more firmly than Harry expected, and certainly more firmly than he knew he actually was inside and contained within it was a surety that made Tom glance over at him, cautious and curious but also strangely in control. 

“Yes, we do,” Tom said, taking a seat on the armchair opposite Harry—the one that he’d so deeply assimilated himself with that they collectively referred to it as _his_ chair. “So, tell me, Harry, do you like being alone with me?” he continued, raising up the peach to examine it in the warm lights hanging above them. 

Harry didn’t reply, or, he did try to but when he opened his mouth, the words just didn’t seem to come out.

“Because I think you like being alone with me,” he said, before lifting the fruit to his mouth and taking a bite; the soft crunch of his teeth cutting through the flesh seemed to hang heavy in the room. Harry had never been envious of a piece of fruit before, but the way that Tom held it so gently and the way he bit down made Harry… yearn to feel his teeth digging into the base of his shoulder, and to feel the pads of Tom’s fingers against his throat. 

It was so _wrong_. 

He had a _wife_ —a woman that he adored and would die for, and yet here he was, all but drooling over his houseguest. Tom wasn’t helping matters either; he had that same smile that’s he’d worn when he’d had someone between his legs—all sharp at the edges and curved at the centre that made Harry’s stomach fold in on itself. Perhaps, if he were a good man, he would leave this situation right now and hide in his bedroom—a self-described prisoner in his own home—until Ginny got home. 

But just as Harry was thinking of being a good man, Tom leaned back into the chair, curving his spine into a comfortable arch and placing both feet firmly against the wood of the floor—his legs spread just wide enough to be suggestive without being shameless. Tom smiled at him.  
“Do you look at your wife like that?” he asked casually, before taking another bite of the peach; its juices wetting his lips and adding a certain sweetness to his demeanour that must have been artificial because nothing about Tom was naturally sweet—synthetically, perhaps—with a crude aftertaste that was bitter on the back of your mouth, but not naturally. 

“What sort of question is that?” Harry said, shifting uncomfortably as he watched Tom’s hands grip and regrip the peach.

“A necessary one,” Tom said, as he spoke, his eyes dipped down the length of Harry’s body, the movement, slow and self-assured, tracking over the creases of his shirt and the seamlines of his trousers. Harry shifted again, and Tom’s mouth twitched into a wider, more genuine, smile.  
“Given the way you look at me, that is,” he added. 

Between them, the air was thick—heavy—an intense weight on his lungs, and in the background, rather like the soft accompaniment of music, Harry could feel the hum of Tom’s magic weaving its way through every molecule of oxygen. And still, Tom continued to watch him with a gaze that would have been clinical had it not been for the way it lingered on his neck. Tom wetted his lips. 

“You find me attractive,” he said eventually, not moving and not displaying any unease at the potential revelation, if anything, the ever so slight incline of his brow would imply, he was delighted with the prospect. 

But Harry nearly choked, “what?” he said, a mixture of shock and embarrassment weaving its way into his tone, as though he was a child whose wayward antics had been discovered. 

“I said,” Tom repeated, now looking up to meet Harry’s gaze, “you find me attractive, don’t you, Harry?”

“Well… umm,” Harry started stumbling over the words, “you’re a pleasant—a pleasant young man,” he found himself saying and immediately flushing like a fool because it was a ridiculous turn of phrase that made him sound like he was fifty and Tom like he was sixteen—he certainly wasn’t.

If Tom was offended, he didn’t show it, he just tipped his head back to rest against the lip of the chair and laughed to himself—soft and low. “I’m pleasant?” he repeated, looking down at his hand as he did so; flexing the left one in such a way that Harry knew that he was staring at them again, admiring their length, that tapered elegance, and the prominence of the knuckles, and imagining what they would feel like pressed against his collarbone. Without looking up, Tom continued, “oh,” he said, “I think I’m a lot more than pleasant.”

“You flatter yourself,” Harry said without thinking. 

That got a reaction. Tom looked up, his eyes sharp and irritated—almost abrasive; he met Harry’s gaze and held it, somehow managing to take Harry’s breath away with one simple gaze. “No, Harry,” he said careful and measured, and entirely deliberate, “ _you_ flatter me.”

Without taking his eyes off him, Tom leaned closer; his elbows resting on his thigh and his head tilted just a little to the right and back enough that Harry could see the strong lines of his throat. “You know why?” he asked, in the same, infuriating, tone, “because you can’t take your eyes off me, can you?”

There was a glaze of truth so thick over those words that Harry chose to stare at the floor. Just staring at the straight edge of the carpet and how it didn’t quite reach Tom’s toes, whilst a narcotic mix of guilt and shame and something that felt horribly like arousal pooled low in his stomach and made the skin at the back of his neck prickle. Tom was an attractive and potentially lethal man and Harry had a weakness for attractive, venomous things—Ginny was testament to that. 

“You’re always trying to sneak glances,” Tom continued, “and you’re about as subtle as a brick.” The jibe was unnecessary, but he sensed Tom took pleasure in saying it; just as he took pleasure in sitting up, his back once again pressed against the armchair, and the nape of his neck resting on the lip. Harry would have been lying if he said he didn’t want to eat him up—lick him off his fingers and taste him on the back of his throat. 

“But you can look now,” Tom said, interrupting that thought as he somehow opened up his body a little more; maybe, it was the spread of his shoulders, and the lazy splay of his hand over his thigh, and the slight tilt of his head, but he looked mouth-wateringly good.  
“Go on, Harry,” he continued; his tone low and the words just dripping off his tongue, all slow and sultry and utterly heart-pounding, “take a nice long look.”

Harry did _try_ and resist, and for more than thirty seconds he kept his eyes on the line of the carpet, and the angles of Tom’s feet that were just starting to tap against the floor; the fingers resting on his thigh joining in the sound, but Tom didn’t back down from his offer. All that he did was shift his legs a fraction wider and finished the last of the peach; his teeth scraping against the central stone with a definite mark of savagery that shouldn’t have got Harry’s pulse thumping in his throat, in quite the way it did. 

“I know you like what you see,” Tom said, apparently so enamoured with the sound of his own voice that he couldn’t shut up, not that Harry blamed him. There was something in the way he spoke that was magnetic, always using the right tone and the right balance that Harry’s insides tied themselves up in knots that they hadn’t done for what seemed ages. 

Not since he’d married Ginny. 

“I know you want a taste,” he continued, as Harry tried to bury every single thought about his wife into the pit inside his heart; alongside that love and respect and common decency, he shoved the noxious haze of guilt and future regret that was weighing heavy on his lungs. Absolutely everything about this was wrong but Harry would be lying if he said he wanted it to stop. It wasn’t since their marriage that Harry had felt this much excitement, this much intoxicated giddiness at the simple approach of someone else. 

So, Harry said nothing when Tom stood up, and stepped forward, placing the peach stone down in a novelty ashtray someone had brought them for Christmas, and that they mostly used for teabags and sharpening quills. 

Nor did he say anything when Tom got closer, so close that he could reach out and touch him if he wanted, and judging the look in Tom’s eyes, he wanted, he wanted very much. Tom’s fingers were still sticky when they touched his cheek, and for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, it made Harry want to put them on his tongue and suck them clean. Instead, he just looked up at Tom, admiring how from this angle his face was dipped in shadows that made his eyes gleam the colour of black chocolate.

“Do you want to kiss me, Harry?”

 _Yes._

Merlin, yes. 

That was this itch under his skin. The flush he got under his collar and the burning of his ears every time he thought about Tom. He wanted to touch him, and taste him, and work out exactly what it was that got him so worked up. But most of all what Harry wanted, was to feel that rush—the wooze of falling in love again, or at least, falling into something. 

But his tongue was too dry to say any of those things—he couldn’t express the nuances of how he was feeling in any way that mattered, he couldn’t tell Tom that he would never be what Ginny was, but he still wanted him to be something. Harry just nodded. 

No sooner than he did, Tom’s hands were holding his neck and his palms were cool and his fingers were sticky and the whole thing felt so _intimate_ that Harry wanted to burn up with shame. But he couldn’t even voice a protest before Tom was kissing him; slow and heavy, tasting his mouth—the lingering sweetness of the peach still staining his lips. And, _Merlin_ , did Tom kiss well, just the right pressure and speed and intensity to make Harry’s jaw hurt and the burning need to touch swell unbearably between his ribs. 

“Does your wife kiss you like that?” Tom murmured against his lips, his hands still resting so heavily on the crook of Harry’s neck. And Harry knew without thinking that Ginny had never kissed him like that—sure, she kissed him hard and messy sometimes—like they did back when the world was ending—but it was always fast and rough and so, so good. She didn’t take her time to bit his lip and ease his mouth open and kiss him until his jaw ached, but Tom did.

It was so, so _wrong._

But that even didn’t make him stop Tom from taking his chin between his fingers—so tight that it would surely leave fingerprints—and holding his head up so that their eyes met. “You know,” Tom said, gripping even harder, “I wondered how long it would take…” Harry swallowed and continued to hold his gaze, “…before you snapped.”

“I haven’t snapped,” he mumbled back.

Tom smiled and whilst still holding Harry’s chin, pushed him back against the sofa with his spare hand; he used a surprising degree of strength and, though, Harry was sure he could take on Tom in a show of physical strength, he also found himself entirely disinclined to doing so.  
“And yet,” he said, interrupting his musing, “here you are, with the taste of me on your lips and the look of guilt all over you.”

Harry stared at him, his mouth moving but the words not even forming in his brain let alone on his tongue because Tom was right. He was absolutely, unbearably, right. 

“And you still don’t want me to stop, do you?” Tom murmured as he climbed into Harry’s lap and trapped him there between the sofa and his body. Despite his cold hands, the rest of Tom was shocking warm—suffocating—and this close Harry could smell the fabric softener they used ingrained into Tom’s clothes, and how it mixed with the lingering scent of his cologne.

It was a heady scent, stuck close to his skin, a combination of spice and richness, the brand of which Harry couldn’t place, but it smelled noxious and expensive, and it made Harry want to take a bite out of Tom. To get his skin between his teeth and lick and chew and roll him all over his tongue, but that wasn’t what was happening. 

In fact, Harry was being pressed harder into the sofa, a cushion pushing uncomfortably against the base of his spine as Tom’s weight kept him still. Tom had also let go of his chin, and instead had moved his attention to hooking his hands around the back of Harry’s neck—the palms heavy on his skin, and the tips of his fingers working their way into his hairline—and he was kissing at the corner of his mouth in a light, almost tentative, way that would have been so intimate coming from anyone else, but from Tom, it just felt like a tease.

“Do you even love your wife, Harry?” Tom said, moving down to mouth along Harry’s jaw and run his teeth over his throat. 

“Please stop calling her my wife,” he said, intending to snap at Tom, but somehow pleading with him instead—all soft and pathetic like a child trying to justify themselves. “Ginny’s more than that,” he added because she was; she was everything he’d ever wanted, and ever needed, and ever— 

“But she’s not _enough_ , is she?” Tom said, cracking apart the thought of Ginny as his mouth scraped over the skin of Harry’s neck, “if she was, you wouldn’t be here on your sofa, with someone else in your lap, now would you?” For a moment, Tom pulled back to look him in the eye and to smile in that shattering way that made you feel like the centre of the universe. 

And Harry could feel the last of his resolve melting away and, in its place, grew a thrill; the feeling of doing something so very wrong just for the hell of it; something reckless and brash and electrifying. Without thinking about the consequences, Harry raised his hands up from the seat of the sofa to rest them against Tom’s waist. It was different feeling the body of a man to that of a woman—there were different contours to the skin and different shapes to the bones, and it was all just so exhilaratingly _different_. 

But just as Tom was starting to undo the topmost buttons of his shirt, there came the sound of keys fumbling against the lock—the tell-tale rattling of someone missing the keyhole because the light outside was broken and no one had gotten around to fixing it yet.  
“That’ll be your Ginevra,” Tom said, his lips grazing over Harry’s lips as he spoke, and his hands staying firmly around his neck. “Maybe I should go,” he continued, though he made no attempt to unpeel himself, “or, _maybe_ I should stay right here, Harry, and show her what her husband does when she’s not home?”


	2. Chapter 2

For all his heavy words, Tom extracted himself before Ginny made it into the room—untangling his limbs and just pausing for what seemed like forever to look at Harry’s face. Harry flushed; red-hot embarrassment noxiously combined with a realisation of what he’d just done, crawling down his spine and sitting heavy in his stomach. He had just _cheated_ on his wife. On _Ginny_. And he’d _enjoyed_ it. 

In the corridor, he could hear Ginny fumbling with her bag and untying her shoes, but Tom continued to watch him like they had all the time in the world.  
“That was a good talk, Harry,” he murmured eventually, “and I think you’d like to do it again sometime, wouldn’t you?” he continued, his mouth so close that Harry could taste the inflection of every word, but he didn’t answer—even if the answer he would give was hanging tacit and heavy in the room around them.

Tom just smiled. “I know I would,” he said, before leaning in and pressing his lips to Harry’s for one last, lingering, kiss. Then, he was gone. Standing up and smiling as Ginny came through the door, as though he’d been doing nothing untoward with her husband; as though Harry had been doing nothing untoward with his houseguest. 

When he put it like that, it sounded so much worse because, surely, he was breaking some sort of duty of care between a landlord and a tenant, but then again, Tom _was_ an adult and he could make his own decisions—Merlin he was trying to rationalise something that should never have happened and certainly was never going to happen again.

Maybe?

Because Harry could hardly deny how dizzying it felt to be wanted like that; his palms itching and his heart pumping—throbbing—in his chest, and the blood rushing too fast in his head that he couldn’t even hear what Tom was saying to his wife. But just because he couldn’t hear the nuances, it didn’t mean it wasn’t obvious that he was using those shiny words to keep Ginny’s attention on him, probably, because Tom fed off attention—grasping at it like a child reaching for candy. 

And just like the protagonist in that movie about the carnivorous plant begging for blood that Hermione had lent him, Harry had been weak; he had given Tom exactly what he wanted—enough attention to sustain him for at least a few days. 

But that wouldn’t be enough, would it? 

Harry certainly didn’t want it to be enough. It was immoral to even think about, but he wanted Tom to come crawling back to him—hungry and wanting for his attentions—and willing to up the danger and the thrill every time just to get something he craved. It was worlds away from the married mundanity that his life had become. Harry swallowed and flexed his hand, not yet willing to move from the chair that still had the dents of Tom’s knees pressed into the leather. 

As surreptitiously as he could, he turned his head to look at Tom; he was standing there chatting away to Ginny with his hand hooked around the lip of the chair and the curve of his back dangerously close to provocative. Looking at Tom now, it was obvious there was a lot more to him than the scraps of stories that Harry had been fed—beneath the golden boy persona there was something hot and dark and dangerous that Harry desperately wanted to get his teeth into. 

He wanted to open up this fascination Tom had been harbouring—nurturing, really—in his head, and see what would happen if it was given the space to spill out into the tangible world and stain everything Tom touched, including Harry himself. For there was no stopping obsession when it bloomed, especially not in someone like Tom. 

If Harry had learnt anything from living with him the last few months, it was that he was voracious in getting the things he wanted, from obscure books to the highest grades, to the most decadent company; that and the fact Tom was, almost dangerously, covetous of intimacy—he craved it—Harry had seen that from the evening they had together, the three of them together, Tom always watched them with a yearning desperation as though a disease had gotten under his skin. 

And now, without thinking about the consequences of his actions, Harry had given him a taste, and Tom would likely pull at every loose thread until he could make Harry give him another. 

They were still talking; Harry could hear them, though the words were foggy and somewhat dense in the back of his head. Tom’s careful words blurring with the silky soft tone of voice—a noxious mixture of politeness and flattery that always made Ginny laugh. _He_ was making Ginny laugh. That gorgeous sound that had got Harry falling in love before he could even describe what love was supposed to feel like.

Yet, Harry didn’t turn around and look his wife in the eye. _He couldn’t_. Not when less than a minute ago, he’d had someone else poured into his lap, and that same someone had held his neck so gently and had kissed his mouth so intently and intensely, like they were dying of thirst and his mouth was their own salvation. Compared to that Ginny’s kisses were just as impassioned but twice as perfunctory. Her touch was nice but her fingerprints didn’t burn every inch of his skin that she had touched. And the tips of Harry’s fingers didn’t tingle when they held her; he flexed them again, staring at the fingers because they should have been stained in some way. 

Because cheating on his wife shouldn’t have been so easy.

Though that particular thought was interrupted by Ginny artfully tipping herself over the back of the sofa so that her mouth was by his ear—her hair, still slightly damp from her hasty post-training shower, dangling against his neck—and her hand coming to rest on his opposite shoulder, massaging the muscle with a firmness of touch that Harry needed, just to ground him back in a sense of reality.

“Hey,” she murmured, kissing his cheek softly, her fingers not stopping, “good day?”

It was so marital and mundane; the boring world that they’d fallen into as husband and wife—no excitement, no elation, no _thrill _.  
“Yeah,” Harry heard himself reply, “I suppose so,” he added, that ugly, churning, guilt eating up his stomach because Ginny’s lips felt so nice on his cheek, and her fingers were so gentle as they ran circles over his collarbone because he was _still_ thinking about Tom.__

__“That’s good,” she said, her lips dipping right down to kiss his jaw lightly, completely unaware that her husband’s eyes were drifting to someone else._ _

__Tom was standing, or rather leaning, against the edge of the wall, still looking as perfect as ever—though there were cracks if you knew where to look. The hem of his jumper was no longer straight and there was a smouldering quality to his eyes that made Harry’s heart continue to pump harder than he’d like; the feeling really could only be described like gravity. With nothing more than his gaze, Tom was pulling him into his orbit, and once Harry was inside, the force of it all was threatening to tear him apart, and it made him hot and tight and entirely nervous._ _

__As he stood there, out the way because he wasn’t directly involved in the moment, but he didn’t _need_ to be either; not when his presence was felt in the heat of the room, and the burning under Harry’s skin, and that horrid white-hot electricity that seemed to skitter through the air. Tom licked his lips, and Harry found himself mimicking the movement, even as he reached up to cup the cheek of his wife._ _

__When Harry kissed Ginny, it felt like he was kissing Tom._ _

__Though her mouth was a different shape and her lips were cracked from so much flying, and she wasn’t using her tongue or her teeth in quite the same, delectable, way that Tom did; they were still lips, still a mouth he could pretend belonged to whoever he wanted it to. He wanted it to be Tom, and it was so _wrong_ to want that. Harry didn’t need to look across the room to know that Tom was watching him kiss his wife; he could feel the burn of his eyes, and he already knew the curated casualness in his stance and the tightness with which he was holding onto the doorframe. When Ginny pulled away, he chanced a glance. _ _

__Tom was standing there in faux nonchalance, his head tilted to the side and his knuckles rimmed with white as he gripped the wood of the doorframe. He was watching with the same, intense, gaze as before; the one that was possessive. Jealous. Hungry._ _

__Harry swallowed and shook his head, trying to rinse his mind clear of Tom, but as hard as he tried to wring him out, the water still ran muddy, and Harry could still taste his sugar-sweet kisses all over his mouth. He felt hot and dirty. All his insides were unwinding, and that awful toxic guilt was already burning the lining of his stomach, threatening to _eat_ him from the inside out._ _

__But he was pulled back into the real world by Ginny as she pulled herself back over the sofa to stand up properly and throw her bag onto the spare chair.  
“So, Tom,” she said, forcing him to slap on that winning smile again, “I’m bloody hungry—what are you cooking?”_ _

__That was but another testament to how effortlessly Tom had eased his way into their world—he cooked dinner for them a couple of times a week, and he ate with them, he watched television with them, and listened to Harry’s rantings about his department, and went to watch Ginny’s games. It had all seemed so _innocent_ before—just a young man, not unlike Harry himself, searching for a family—but now everything about it was parasitic. And Harry had made it so much worse—lighting match that starts the bonfire—because he let Tom have the one thing that he’d never been able to get before. _ _

__Harry swallowed again and stayed in the chair, his feet firmly planted on the floor as he watched the two of them go into the kitchen together like they always did. They fitted so well together did Tom and Ginny, Ginny and Tom; his shoulder pressed into hers, and her leaning into his space as he talked about some interesting little fact he’d learnt in his lectures and his books, and him laughing when she shared today’s disaster story from her training. They were just so _natural_ with each other, perfectly in control of how they felt towards one another, in comparison Harry was just a wobbling, spineless, mess dressed up in human skin. _ _

__He watched as they continued to talk about nothing, Ginny saying something that Harry didn’t quite catch, but that made Tom smile and glance up at him, where his gaze lingered for a few too many seconds before turning back to watch Ginny. She had grabbed a glass of water from the sink, and was sipping it as she sat back on the stool, using her wand to toss Tom the ingredients he asked for: garlic cloves and onions and a couple of carrots flew through the air with the grace of domestic bliss._ _

__And she looked so _gorgeous_ like that, under the kitchen lights with her hair bright, and her eyes shining and agitating magic in her fingertips. Harry watched as the light smoothed over her skin, and highlighted her freckles, and emphasised everything that Harry had fallen so badly in love just to perfection. His head knew that it was _Ginny_ that he wanted, it was _Ginny_ that he’d married, and _yet_ , there was a swelling in his heart, or more likely his dick, that meant Harry’s gaze still wandered, in morbid curiosity, over to Tom. _ _

__Under the same bright lights, his features were more severe than in the sitting room—the work of a patient sculptor, who had taken their time to fashion the angles into something infinitely sharper, and unbearably handsome, especially when there were no soft shadows to mellow the blow of such intense perfection._ _

__Because that was what Tom was: a man beyond perfection._ _

__He was still chatting with Ginny as his hands wrapped themselves around the handle of a knife and he began to chop at the vegetables—cutting into the carrot with heavy strokes of the knife that clunked against the chopping board and that resounded right into Harry’s heart. Although it was just pathetic, Harry felt like that fucking carrot. Just being sliced open and cut apart again and again by Tom’s gaze; watching the curl of his fingers around the handle, and wishing he knew what they felt like properly coiled around the back of his neck. Or watching how hard he gripped the knife and knowing that he wanted to feel Tom grasping his hair with the same controlling vigour, even as his legs were wrapped helplessly around Harry’s waist, easing out his core with such dexterity and made him forget who exactly it was that he was supposed to be._ _

__Because Harry had never been a man who would cheat on his wife, that was something that other men did—lesser men—and yet, however brief the moment had been, Harry had still let—practically begged—for someone else to kiss his mouth. What made it worse though, so much worse, was that he _still_ wanted it. That he couldn’t deny. It was in the tingling of his fingertips, and in his inability to keep still, and in the stickiness on the back of his neck, and in the—_ _

__“Harry?”_ _

__Harry snapped his head up, blinking. Tom was watching him; he was leaning against the worktop and his fingers were dipped into a recipe book. He looked expectant. “Harry?” he repeated, all distant and filled with weighty expectation._ _

__“Harry?” Ginny repeated, waving her hand at him, “look at him,” she said, leaning over to Tom, “he’s miles away.”_ _

__Harry shook his head, “what?”_ _

__Ginny rolled her eyes but smiled, “we said,” she continued, still watching Tom, “why don’t you come over here, hmm? Instead of sitting there all by yourself?”_ _

__She looked so genuinely sincere that Harry forced himself to get up; peeling his back off the chair, his skin entirely too hot and too sticky, and the fabric of his shirt rubbing uncomfortably on his neck. Even just standing up, he felt unsteady, with a wooze in his head and a trembling in his hands like he was a schoolboy about to meet his crush behind the bike shed._ _

__Swallowing hard though, he wandered with false confidence towards the kitchen, and within moments of entering, Ginny caught him by the shirt and wrapped her arm around his waist, squeezing tight. Harry leant into her body—feeling the shifting of muscles as she moved her arms when she spoke—and finding comfort in the warm firmness of the body she had spent so long perfecting. Though even as he buried his chin in her hair, he couldn’t help his gaze straying over her head, to watch Tom as he nodded along as he read his recipes, listening to Ginny chat about how Gertie was now back on top form, and how Glover had finally sorted out her blind spot and that victory this season was actually looking hopeful._ _

__He looked so interested._ _

___Like he actually cared._ _ _

__Which was frankly sickening because Harry couldn’t concentrate on any of it, at least not a hundred per cent, not with Tom chancing glances at him, and especially not when those glances were accompanied by a stupid, wandering, hand. Tom’s hand. With his right he was flipping through the recipe book, turning the pages slowly, and with his left, he was shamelessly _touching_ what he shouldn’t. The action, nigh on impossible for Ginny to see, but the touch of his fingertips gentle and burning as he rubbed his thumb over the seam of Harry’s jeans making him hot all over and jittery in his own skin._ _

__He was practically being felt up in his own kitchen, in front of his wife, and he couldn’t even bring himself to stop it._ _

__Harry exhaled deeply, trying to ignore how hard his heart was thumping and the fact that his hands were still trembling, by placing them both on the worktop and pushing down onto the granite in the guise of stretching, whilst deliberately pressing the top of his thighs against the counter in a weak attempt to stop Tom’s hand wandering any further. And still, Ginny didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t listening—that her words were nothing more than a blur—as he stared at the chairs in the sitting room, all but seeing himself sitting there with Tom stretched over his lap and kissing his mouth._ _

__Casually, Tom flipped through another page of his recipe book, careful and deliberate as he took his time to turn each and every page, in the guise for searching for a specific sauce he could only remember by ingredients—though Harry was entirely convinced the delay had less to do with a sauce and more to do with the fact that Tom wasn’t done touching. He hadn’t finished touching and tasting and _taking_ exactly what he wanted, and Harry was too filled with weak-willed shame to deny him. _ _

__“Come on,” Ginny said suddenly, loud enough that Harry snapped his head up; her tone was bordering on whining, “just pick one,” she continued, looking pointedly at Tom and his recipe book—her gaze perilously close to seeing exactly what husband let other people do to him. She didn’t see. Instead, Ginny got up to refill her glass, “after all,” she said, “a woman has to eat sometime, and one tomato sauce tastes just like any other.”_ _

__“You know,” Tom said, not even looking up, though he did pause on a page that happened to be covered in pictures of tomatoes, his fingers tracing over the lettering of the title, “that you could have cooked yourself,” he said, his hand retracting from Harry’s thigh, “then, you wouldn’t have had to deal with me.”_ _

__“And _you_ know that I like watching you cook,” Ginny said as leaned against the sink, glass of water in hand, “it’s like having our own personal chef.”_ _

__“You should be paying me then,” Tom quipped back, watching her now._ _

__Ginny hummed as she smiled and took a sip of her water, her thumb tracing up the side of the glass, “maybe I would,” she said coyly, “if I had my wallet on me, but unfortunately…” she shrugged._ _

__For a moment Tom dipped his head back to the book, before rising it again, now with his signature diamond smile spread over his mouth. “Oh, my remuneration doesn’t have to be in cash,” he said, his tone dipping low and his shoulder pressing hard into Harry’s side as he reached forward for another book, though his eyes took their time to track a path down Ginny’s neck and lingering on her collar. “In fact,” he said, “I would happily let you do _whatever_ you want to me and call it payment.”_ _

__Ginny threw a tea towel at him, her cheeks red. “I am a _married_ woman, Tom,” she said—and Harry felt his gut clench because that hadn’t stopped him—though her tone was coloured with laughter that made the entire statement sound less angry and more… teasing. She wasn’t serious because Ginny wouldn’t betray her husband by sleeping with the houseguest. And didn’t Tom know it, for he smiled at Ginny the same way he’d smiled at Harry earlier—all lazy and slow, his mouth forming a seductive curve, spread ever so wide._ _

__He even directed it at Harry again, glancing up at him in the guise of looking for support or condemnation, but Harry’s mouth was dry, and his head was empty of any coherent or useful thought. Instead, it was filled to the brim with horribly wonderful images of Tom using himself as payment; of him just lying on his back with his air falling his eyes like it had done that afternoon, and letting Harry do whatever he wanted because he’d _earned_ the right to use him._ _

__It was overwhelmingly and excruciatingly wrong._ _

__But Harry couldn’t get the thought out of his head._ _

__Not with Tom standing there, watching her, with that daring smile and the tea towel still in his hand, and Ginny watching him back with her cheeks still flushed and her eyes twinkling. At once Harry felt entirely removed from them and inextricably attached—intimately intertwined with Tom’s words because, although they were directed at his wife, a part of him was sure that they were meant for _him_._ _

__Ginny was the first one to swallow and shake her head clear of the haze that Tom and his words had filled the silent air with. “Well,” she said with a sigh, “I’m going to go and do my laundry, and I expect dinner to be ready when I get back,” she said, smiling at Tom with her eyebrows raised in expectation._ _

__“Oh, it will,” Tom said, “I’m sure that Harry will keep an eye on me,” he continued, before adding just quiet enough that Ginny might not hear, “if not his hands.” The tone in which he said it was offensively provocative and Harry felt himself flush again, and he could only hope that the brightness of the lights washed it out. Fortunately, Ginny didn’t seem to notice, her eyes were still too focussed on Tom and his outrageous tongue._ _

__As soon as Ginny had left the kitchen, though not their line of sight, Harry turned to him, “don’t you dare make representations to my wife,” he said, as low and terse as he could._ _

__“I thought she was more than just your wife,” Tom replied, his hand dipping low on Harry’s waist as he spoke, the palm of his hand pressing into the small of Harry’s back and pushing him less than gently against the granite worktop.  
“It doesn’t matter, though,” he said conversationally, “not when I think you know that you want me.” As Tom spoke, his mouth caught on the shell of Harry’s ear, and he paused long enough for the words to spread themselves thick through the air. Tom leaned in a fraction closer, “I think you know you can’t resist,” he continued. _ _

__“But most of all, Harry,” Tom murmured, his mouth brushing over Harry’s throat, “I think you’re afraid because you’ve never wanted someone _this much_.” _ _

__Harry stepped back. “I am a _married_ man,” he hissed, trying to sound as confident as Ginny had done, even as he glanced over at her. If Ginny just looked up, then she would see _everything_. Tom followed his eyes to where Ginny was bending over her bag and rifling through it, looking for anything—or rather, _everything_ —to shove into the washing machine.  
“Oh, I know you are,” Tom murmured, his tone creeping and insidious, just like his hands as they pulled at his belt loops, dragging Harry back closer to him. “so, I’ll just have to try harder to persuade you, won’t I?”_ _


	3. Chapter 3

Fortunately, Ginny had come back, complaining that she’d left her favourite water bottle at training before Tom got an opportunity to try and _persuade_ him. The optimistic—foolish—part of Harry had hoped that that might have been the end of it, that Tom would have seen he wasn’t available for the taking and just leave it alone like a fickle child who’d got bored of a new toy and gone back to the old ones. But the realistic part of Harry knew that this couldn’t possibly be the end, for even if Tom had lost interest, there was no way that he himself would be able to stop looking at Tom and having thoughts he wasn’t supposed to have.

Not when he was always _there_. A physical presence in their house and a tangible presence in their lives, stitched into every moment of their existence from every dinner to every breakfast. Tom was just always there. Of course, there were so many varying remedies that Harry could have undertaken. He could have come clean to Ginny and faced the consequences of his own stupidity, he could have had a frank discussion with Tom about suitable boundaries in their relationship, he could have asked a colleague for help, or a friend for advice, he could even have legally evicted Tom and made the whole problem miraculously vanish.

But Harry didn’t do anything like that.

Instead, he avoided the problem. It was easier than he expected, he ate breakfast earlier and spent longer days at work, in the evenings if Ginny wasn’t home, he hid in their bedroom, staring at the ceiling and wondering what Tom was doing without him, and when his wife was home, he stuck to her like glue. Perhaps too much. But having Ginny remark on his sudden interest in her life was a far easier problem to deal with than standing alongside his houseguest and having to fight the urge smouldering in his fingers to reach out and touch him. 

Because he still wanted to do… _things_ with Tom— _to_ Tom, even when he wasn’t even doing anything interesting. Just watching him sitting in the kitchen, writing an essay, the end of the pen pressed into his lip as he thought, or seeing him splayed across his chair, stretching his mouth around an apple as he read a book on some concept Harry had never heard of, made his cheeks burn and his palms itch with the memory of Tom’s weight pressing against him and the taste of his tongue all over the inside of his mouth.

He shouldn’t be having these feelings, but he couldn’t stop them either. They were like an infection that he had left unchecked, an unruly pathogen that was spreading through him, eating away at his thoughts and at his self-control, swelling bigger, thicker, fatter every day until Harry could feel the weight of it pressing down on his lungs. 

It was the most painful thing that Harry could remember experiencing like someone always had their hand around his throat, or there was always a spectral hand resting on his lower back; holding him steady—still—so that he could stare at Tom doing all those mundane things that looked so good. And no matter how hard he tried, Harry couldn’t help the way his heart beat, full and heavy, in his throat whenever Tom glanced in his direction, nor could he help the growing nerves and tingling in his palms whenever Tom brushed passed him; his shoulder, or his arm, or the tips of his fingers making contact for little more than a moment, though it felt like forever. When that happened, Harry had to tense every muscle in his body as tight as he could just to stop himself turning and watching after Tom like some lovesick puppy.

But his tactic of avoiding Tom was working because if he didn’t see him—if he didn’t physically _feel_ his presence with every pore of his body—then Harry could pretend that he didn’t have these shameful feelings about someone who wasn’t his wife, and that made everything alright, didn’t it? 

In all honesty, he liked to think that the avoiding plan was all going rather well. He hadn’t been alone with Tom for long enough now that Harry was almost tempted to congratulate himself with Ginny’s match on the radio and terrible takeaway dinner. At least, that was until he got home that evening and found no evidence of the shopping that Tom had agreed to do, which under the old circumstances might have been fine; he would have found Tom and they would have had a mature conversation about what had happened to the groceries, but now…?

Now that meant talking to Tom alone, that meant standing there in front of him—entirely exposed—while pretending that he had his life together and didn’t spend every waking second thinking what would have happened if his wife hadn’t come back into the kitchen. 

That was how he found himself pressed against the hallway wall, just outside the bathroom, listening to the sounds of the radio in the sitting room and the roll of the water inside the door. He already knew that the door wouldn’t be locked but the implications of opening it were currently more than he could possibly swallow. For on the other side of that door was Tom, lounging in the bath, probably reading, probably with his hair hanging in his eyes, probably all flushed from the heat of the water, probably looking as good and expensive as those French chocolates Bill and Fleur gifted them.

Harry dropped his head so that his chin was almost on his chest and pressed his palms into the wallpaper, he could almost feel the heat from here; he could almost feel Tom watching him through the wall. But he was an adult, and he was in control of his own feelings, and to ask such a simple question, he didn’t even have to look at Tom, he could just ask him, get the answer, and go back to his evening. 

He could manage that. 

So, before he could overthink the rationality of that thought process, Harry pushed open the door with his shoulder and entered the bathroom with his hands deep in his pockets like a teenager.  
“Tom,” he said firmly, even as he stared out the window and not at the ankles so effortlessly draped over the edge of the bath—stained pink by the heat of the water. Though, for all his own ignorance, Harry could feel the owner of those ankles looking at him with the same gaze that he had been directing his way ever since he’d extracted himself from the kitchen—glowering with such an intensity that Harry could almost feel his spine curling and shifting the contents of his stomach. 

“Tom,” he repeated when he got no reply, still not allowing his gaze to shift away from the frosted glass, and a small black spider spinning its web right in the corner, “did you do the shopping we asked for?” Though the words were so commonplace on his tongue, the sort of thing he’d so casually mention to Ginny that he would never think of it again, with Tom they singed his tongue and made his entire mouth feel dirty for reasons he couldn’t place. 

Tom didn’t answer immediately, and Harry was left standing there, feeling like a fool for asking such a mundane question, and bristling under his skin for giving in and breaking his promise with himself to stay away from Tom, just so he could ask it. But here he was, staring at a spider and asking a stupid question that burned the back of his throat and made him sick—with irritation, with frustration, with _want_. 

“Of course, I did,” Tom said eventually, interrupting Harry’s thoughts by speaking, and, as he did so, shifting, the movement accompanied by the rolling sound of bathwater lapping at the side of the tub. Harry started to turn his head before catching himself and refocussing on the spider; he would _not_ look. 

“Where are they, then?” he settled with asking. Firm; assured like this wasn’t the most important question he’d ever asked. 

Another roll of water and the sound of a book being closed and placed down, and then silence. Harry licked his lips.   
“Tom?” he said again; just his name making his heart beat a little harder against his ribs until they began to ache with the pressure. He swallowed harder, squeezing the blunt tips of his nails into his palms just to give himself a distraction from the silent screaming of Tom’s eyes digging into the back of his head. 

“Look at me, Harry,” he said, slow, taking the time with his pronunciation of each word so that each syllable had ample time to press itself into Harry’s skin and burrow down inside him. It was the sort of tone that probably got people down on their knees, their hands reaching out to touch him like he was some sort of icon just out of their grasp.

Harry didn’t move, he only curled his hand tighter into a fist and exhaled as deeply as he could.   
“No, thanks,” he said. 

In the silence that followed, there was the sound of the book being picked back up and the pages begin to flip as Tom clearly began to start again where he left off. Though this time, there was deliberateness to the sound of the turning pages, a purposeful effort to make the sound resonate around the small room and get right under Harry’s skin. It was working horribly well. For in that calculated silence, every noise was amplified, from the flicking of the pages to the sloshing of the water and the loud ticking of the clock on the wall, counting out the seconds that they stood there less than four feet from each other, but refusing to acknowledge it. That clock clicked past nearly a minute before Harry caved. 

He turned around. 

Tom was watching him over the edge of his book—an old paperback that Harry had lent him, their hands had brushed as he had handed it over and he’d stared at his fingers for too long after—one hand holding it over his face whilst the other was stretched out along the side of the bath. There were bubbles streaked along both arms and gathered in a thin circle surrounding him, floating on the surface and bursting as they grazed against Tom’s skin. Harry swallowed. Despite himself, he let his eyes wander over every inch of Tom, admiring the sharp lines of his shoulders, and the cut of his chest, and even back down the length of his bare arm to the artificially casual splay of his fingers, curled around the lip of the tub. 

Although he wanted to—desperately—Harry did not look down at the water. After all, he might have been able to play a kiss off as being Tom being overly enthusiastic and highly inappropriate, and Ginny might— _might_ —just forgive him for his transgressions, but anything… _more_ was entirely inexcusable. 

Tom snapped the book shut, obviously, and Harry guiltily snapped his gaze back up to his face, not that that was much better. The shadows in here only worked to Tom’s advantage, sharping the angle of his jaw and deepening the colour of his eyes to something luscious. It was the sort of face Harry just wanted to take in his hands, smoothing Tom’s still dry hair behind his ears in the fashion of intimacy and kiss him until he couldn’t breathe.

He wanted to suffocate Tom with the hankering want that sat permanently in his stomach because this mess was all his fault; if _he_ didn’t look so _good_ —like a whole damn meal served on a silver platter—and if he didn’t have this intoxicating gravity about him that made Harry weak at the knees then none of this would have happened. But Tom _was_ that attractive, and he _did_ have that heady quality that clung to his skin like a noxious perfume, and so he deserved to suffer for it. 

Just looking at Tom right now made an ire begin to seethe beneath his skin; this hot, simmering, desire swinging low in his stomach and accompanying it was the slightest of flickering in the back of his mind, guttering, with thoughts he shouldn’t be having. A tingling in the back of his skull as he thought of what it would be like to touch Tom again, to feel the wetness of his skin and the dryness of his lips, to hook his fingers inside his mouth and press down on his tongue until it hurt. 

It was a violent thought that Harry would never dare to have near Ginny; the most he had ever— _would ever_ —do to her was curl her hair around his fingers and gently tug her head back. Tom wasn’t like that. With Tom, he wanted to grab his hair by the fistful and yank his head back until he groaned. 

He had this distinct desire prickling down his spine, to push Tom down and wrap his hands around his neck and hold him under the bathwater. The sick, sadistic part of Harry wanted to watch him choke on the water; it wanted to see Tom squirm and twist and writhe, struggling to breathe, all whilst staring at Harry and his rose-flushed skin through the hazy filter of the water. But most of all, he wanted Tom to let him do it—to just stop struggling and watch him with those black eyes as he lay in the impossible limbo between life and death. 

Harry tried to shake that thought out of his head, but like he was sitting and watching a videotape—at once the observer and the participator—he could see himself on top of Tom, the two of them cramped together in the small bathtub, Tom naked and vulnerable and Harry in his wet clothes holding him down under the water. He could almost imagine the warmth of the water as it circled his wrists and the burning heat of Tom’s mouth and the flush on his cheeks as Harry kissed him.

He swallowed, now physically trying to shake the thought out—clearly, the heat in here was already getting to him, like a noxious vapour gliding between the folds of his brain and making him think of nothing but the taste of Tom. Harry couldn’t even pretend that he _hadn’t_ been thinking about him. The evidence was staining the inside of his head, every wall like an obsessive’s shrine, covered in scraps of Tom.

It was frankly embarrassing, and even though there was no one reading his thoughts, Harry still felt himself flushing at the idea of it. He could almost imagine the look of shock, horror, disgust on someone’s face as they realised the inside of his head was plastered thick with Tom. 

Thinking of the man, Tom was smiling at him, even as he turned his body so that they were facing each other properly. This was the closest that they’d deliberately been to one another since Tom had pulled him flush against him in the kitchen, his fingers wound around his belt loops and that confident spark in his eyes that Harry just couldn’t get out of his head. 

Maybe it was shame, or embarrassment, or just plain old arousal, but Harry’s heart was beating all too fast and he twisted his hands together; interlocking his fingers and pressing the pads of his thumbs together. Faintly, he could hear the sounds of the match beginning on the radio—the whoops and cheers of supporters—that was what he was supposed to be doing, not standing in a room at least ten degrees too hot, watching the subject of his newfound madness trace his silhouette with his gaze. 

The way Tom was made him feel exposed, almost nervous, which was ridiculous because they’d seen each other like this before in the numerous accidents, and none of them had felt as intimate as this. Maybe, before, Harry’s eyes had lingered a little too long on things they shouldn’t have, but those moments had an overwhelming unintentionality about them when this felt… deliberate. Curated. Like Tom had wanted him to see every minute detail from the way the light fell on his shoulders to how the water encircled his skin. 

“I put it away,” he said calmly as he examined his nails, flexing his hand slowly and making Harry think exactly what it would feel like to slide his fingers between Tom’s own and anchor him to the floor. He could dig his nails into that perfect palm and scratch tracks down the back of Tom’s hands; he could ensure Tom would never be without a souvenir of violent affection. 

“Why would you do that?” Harry said, every word sticking in his throat. 

Tom raised an eyebrow and stared at him for a moment, “because, Harry,” he said slowly, “Ginevra asked me to.”

“What?”

This time, Tom rolled his eyes and tapped his nails on the edge of the bath. “Ginevra asked me to put the shopping away,” he said, “so I obliged, after all, you know how much I like your wife, Harry.” He paused for a moment, letting the proper weight of his words be felt pressing into Harry’s skin, then he continued, “she certainly looks… good enough to eat,” he said. 

It was so suggestive and so deliberate that it almost hurt to hear, and Harry _really_ did not want to be thinking about Ginny right now. Not when he was sitting in the bathroom with his unfairly attractive houseguest, who just happened to be the embodiment of the word tantalising and thinking about doing things to him that should have made him burn with shame. They didn’t. 

“Don’t talk about her like that,” he said—weakly at that.

“Oh, Harry,” Tom’s smile widened—his teeth all visible—and he leaned even further forward, the water shifting as he did so, “are you _so_ unwilling to share?”

“No—Yes—Just—This—This just isn’t about Ginny, alright?” he snapped. 

Tom raised his hand in surrender like a snake coiling back into the grass after an unsuccessful strike and settled with stretching himself out a little further in the water so that Harry couldn’t help but notice him.   
“Alright, but is that all you wanted to ask me, Harry?” he said, “what I did with the shopping?” As he spoke, Tom, ever so casually, ran the tips of his fingers down his arm, pushing off the droplets of water—they slid off his skin easily and ran down the outside of the tub. “Or, maybe, you had something else on your mind?”

The way his tone altered at the end like he knew exactly what Harry was thinking, made Harry still himself and glance away from Tom, choosing instead to focus on the outer rim of the bath; watching the shadows as they moved, and the small droplets of water than Tom continued to push over the edge. He couldn’t say Tom wasn’t on his mind because he was, he was, broadcasting out, right from the centre. But he wouldn’t admit that Tom was his sole reason for coming in here—he was avoiding him after all. 

Tom interrupted him. “You know,” he said, “if you want to take another look at me, you only have to ask, Harry,” he said, leaning back in the bath and tilting his neck so that the back of his head rested against the edge. It was such a calculated action that got Harry looking at his throat and wondering what it would smell like, what it would taste like, and how it would feel to touch and mouth and paint with bruises that his wife could see. He could almost imagine Ginny’s raised eyebrows, and the side-glance she would give him as if to say, _‘I didn’t know he was seeing someone.’_

So too could he imagine the thrill in his stomach, so dense and wet at the thought of doing something to Tom that he couldn’t hide—of flaunting this thing to everyone without any of them knowing that it was him behind it. Just from the thought of it, his heart was pumping harder than it had since his wedding, and Harry could taste the rush of adrenaline on the back of his throat—thick and heavy like his trachea was stuffed with cotton. 

It was so, _so_ wrong to want to do those things to someone who wasn’t your wife, wasn’t it?

Tom just smiled. “There’s a chair right there if you want to stay,” he said, raising his hand and gesturing to the wicker chair they used to hang the towels, or their clothes, or sometimes balance the radio. Currently, the only thing visible on the chair was a neat pile consisting of Tom’s slacks, shirt and the loop of his belt placed on the top like a snake ready to slide around Harry’s throat. 

For a moment, Harry hesitated, glancing over at Tom, he was watching carefully, those black eyes tracing his silhouette. Harry swallowed, trying the ignore the growing apprehensions in his stomach—this wasn’t part of the plan—he picked up the belt. The leather was warm and damp in his palm, and heavy with implications, after all, if he sat down now, did that mean he was acquiescing to Tom’s whims? Was he putting himself under Tom’s jurisdiction, or was Tom placing his jurisdiction on him? Did it even matter who was supposedly playing who when they were both there for the same thing?

“Go on, Harry,” Tom murmured, scarcely opening his lips to speak, “take a seat.”

There was something in that tone that made Harry sit, at least, that was what he would claim if anyone ever asked him about it; that there was something stitched between the lettering of Tom’s that compelled him to sit on that chair. Even so, he could feel Tom’s clothes underneath him, and the heat of the air pulling at his t-shirt collar and making his skin itch as though it were a size too small. 

And, as though this room wasn’t small enough, behind him—wandlessly and wordlessly—the heavy bolt of the door slid closed; Tom showing off because he could. Although it was such a simple action, the air in the room immediately became closer, hot and sticky on his shirt, until it was borderline claustrophobic 

“Do you want to try something new?” Tom said, with just enough of a tilt of his neck to indicate that _he_ was the latest thing on the menu. 

“I’m married,” he said, though the words fell weakly from his mouth and each syllable was stained with a tone of disgraceful disappointment as though marrying Ginny hadn’t been the best thing that he had ever done. 

“That didn’t stop you before,” Tom quipped back, before leaning forward, both hands curled over the edge of the bath. “You’ve _already_ been unfaithful to your wife, Harry,” he murmured, the words sounding intoxicatingly good as they dripped off his tongue, “so why not make her disappointment worthwhile,” he continued, “and do something you’re _really_ not supposed to do.”

“Like what?” Harry heard himself say, far-off, distant, like the voice that was asking that awful question, wasn’t coming from his throat. 

“Me.”

The answer was crude and simple and audacious, and it made Harry’s pulse zing and fizz and burn. His insides screwing themselves up into the tightest ball before unwinding and unwinding and unwinding; spinning him all out for the world to see. For all her brilliance, Ginny hadn’t made him feel like this in such a long time—there’s a was a romance made for the long term and so it didn’t have these riffs and jolts of such shocking pleasure he could hardly believe it was real. 

Tom interrupted his thoughts again though; this time with a question. “What would you do if I kissed you now?” he said, an eyebrow raised just high enough for this to be a genuine concern of his. 

“I’d tell you to stop,” Harry said, not because that was the answer he wanted to give, but because it was the answer, he _had_ to give. He could control himself. 

“And if I touched you.”

“I’d tell you to stop.”

Tom paused, his head titled forward ever so slightly and his teeth resting on his bottom lip—he was thinking like he did when he got stuck half-way through an essay.   
“What if,” he said eventually, “ _you_ touched _me_ , Harry?” he continued, just as cautious and careful, but now with that same electric spark in his eyes, “then what would you do?”

Harry couldn’t find the words to fit in his mouth; he should say that he’d tell him to stop, that just because he was doing the touching, it didn’t make it remotely right. But the words just wouldn’t come, and he sat there with his stomach coiling, and his legs aching, and his hands pressed together so tightly his fingers were rimmed with white. 

And apparently, that was enough for Tom, as without a moment’s more consideration, he leant back, his spine shifting to fit with the curvature of the tub, and his right hand sliding so elegantly beneath the surface of the water—bubbles sticking to his wrist. And Harry couldn’t help but swallow loud enough to hear, his own saliva scratching at his throat like he’d swallowed a handful of grit; he didn’t need to see the exact movements of Tom’s fingers to know what he was doing, and just thinking of the audacity of it made his face flush and the inside of his mouth feel hot. 

“You want to touch me, don’t you?” he said, though his words were stickier now, and he spoke them slower as though each had to be individually pulled off his tongue. Harry shifted his legs, unwilling to acknowledge the stinging deep in his muscles from straining them too much, or the pressure throbbing somewhere inside him. _Merlin_ , he wanted to touch Tom—hopelessly and desperately and shamelessly—he wanted to push Tom under the water until his hair was soaked through and there were droplets of water dripping off his eyelashes, and he wanted to kiss him so fucking hard that he couldn’t even describe it. 

Wanting that hard made him feel out of control.

Perhaps that was why he found himself sliding down to his knees beside the tub—some crass, biological trait taking control of his limbs—though, if he was honest, Harry would admit that it was because he was thinking with his dick again. 

Tom continued to watch him, his smile wide and his eyes black and slick like crude oil, as Harry pressed himself firmly into the side of the bath, his fingers moulding themselves to the edge as though it were the last thing connecting him to reality.   
“How badly do you want to touch me, Harry?” Tom murmured, his hand still under the water—making ripples—and the muscles in his throat shifting as he swallowed harder than before—the slippery surface that he always presented to the world sliding off for long enough that Harry could see a glimpse of what was underneath. 

“I bet it’s all you can think about, isn’t it?” Tom continued, his voice hitching ever so slightly, “getting your hands on me.”

Harry gritted his teeth and tried to think of something that wasn’t the asphyxiating colour of Tom’s eyes burrowing into him. Yes, he _had_ been thinking about getting his hands on Tom; working his fingers into the creases and just touching as much as he physically could before someone told him to stop; and yes, just thinking those things made him feel hot and dirty, his palms itching and his stomach aching. But that was all part of the delicious thrill eating away at him piece by piece. 

“So why don’t you, Harry?”

Tom’s left hand that had been gripping at the lip of the bath, now reached down for Harry’s hand, and they both watched as Tom just guided it gently over to him. For a moment, Tom merely kept him hovering above the water, and the seconds seemed to last for years and his hand was suspended above the bathwater, steam curling around his fingertips as he waited for Tom to do the unthinkable. He did. In one steady movement, Tom pulled his hand under the water, and didn’t it feel prophetic? 

A baptism in unholy water.

It was hot beneath the water and on contact Harry’s palm stung with it. But he couldn’t dwell on the pricking of his skin, not when there were other, far more important, things to consider below the surface of the water. Like the feeling of Tom’s hand against his own, and the spiking press of his knuckles into Harry’s palm, when he—voluntarily—wrapped his hand around Tom’s and felt just how achingly hard he’d made himself. 

And as he did it, Harry tried to forget that this was crossing all sorts of boundaries that he promised himself that he wouldn’t, after all, it was one thing to awkwardly kiss your houseguest when they press themselves against you, it was quite another to _choose_ to wrap your hand around said houseguest’s just to feel how much they want it.

Tom wanted it. 

Tom _really_ wanted it. 

And Harry only knew that because he was _touching_ Tom.

Though even now, he would maintain that he wasn’t _technically_ touching, it was close enough that shame singed his cheeks and a sick feeling rose in his throat, and he almost pulled away, but the expression plastered onto Tom’s face caught his eye. His breathing was lighter than before—faster too—and his lips were parted, but Harry found his gaze drawn to the inked hollows of Tom’s eyes, and the flickering of the pupils like someone was playing around with the power source inside his head. It made him feel like one of those deep-sea fishes attracted to the predator lights that would only lead to his demise. 

But Harry couldn’t look away. 

Not when Tom’s eyes held him so still, even as he shifted his hand, at first, just the slightest couple of millimetres up, but when Harry let him, he slid his hand up and back down, dragging Harry’s along with him. Harry could have let go. He _should_ have let go. But he didn’t, instead, he pressed his fingers into Tom’s, and squeezed his hand and feeling his stomach drop as Tom shuddered, gripping hard at the side of the bath. It was provocative, seductive, entirely pornographic as Tom dropped his head back, a crease forming in his neck and a smile hooking at the corner of his mouth, and, of course, those eyes of his, like marshland mud sucking at Harry’s feet, they dragged him further into moral depravity just by looking at them. 

Tom swallowed, his shoulders straining and a firm, peachy, blush now affecting every inch of his skin; Harry had never wanted to take a bite out of someone more. To simply push his teeth into Tom’s shoulder and drag his nails down his back because he could, because doing something that _wrong_ was an intoxicating thought that got his insides pulsating and his lungs heaving in the best possible way.

So, Harry didn’t stop gripping Tom when he moved again; his palm pressed into the back of Tom’s hand as it slid roughly over his skin and made him wince in pleasure, those sticky, needy, sounds rolling off his tongue.

Like that, it didn’t take long for Tom’s eyes to squeeze shut and his hand to begin to stutter, and it to become obvious that he was so desperately—painfully—close and Harry was _still_ here, watching, with his hand wrapped around Tom’s, and it was so close, so _intimate_ that it was like he was doing this to him. Harry swallowed and pushed himself harder into the side of the tub, trying to cut through the compulsion to take control of the moment and get Tom off as hard and rough as he wanted to.

Because that was what Tom _wanted_ him to do.

Harry could feel it in the air, so heavy that it was practically dissolving on his tongue. Tom might have vulnerable at this moment, but he wasn’t naïve; he knew _exactly_ what he was doing when he brushed his teeth over his lip and allowed his breathing to drop another octave—artificially losing control of himself. It was as fascinating to see as it was infuriating, and, in that moment, Harry wanted nothing more than to be the one who made Tom really lose control. 

The one who, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, hauled Tom out of the bath and dragged him into the bedroom and just took him on the bed he shared with his wife. It made him burn to think about. It forced the feeling that had been writhing around under his skin into the open—that seething want so close to the line of anger but never quite pushing over it, skittered over his skin and made him shiver despite the stickiness lingering in every crevice of his skin. 

And still, Tom lay there—teasing himself with the tips of his fingers—his toes curling and his hand clenching on the side of the tub as the high-wire pleasure began to rift and spark inside him. Just seeing him like that—so _exposed_ —Harry couldn’t help but squeeze his hand again, all at once shoving Tom closer to his climax and dragging him back; nor could he help the smile that crept on to his face as Tom inhaled sharply and twisted, the water threatening to slop over the side as his plan and, more importantly, his control was spectacularly derailed. 

It was gorgeous to watch. 

Gorgeous to see the consequences of his actions and to feel the power he had over someone else, for there was power in this—so much fucking power—and that filled every pore of his body with a fantastic, almost electrical, adrenaline. The junkie buzz of being wanted, craved, _needed_ by someone else—Ginny didn’t _need_ him, they were partners, and they complemented each other as partners should, but with Ginny, everything was equal share, and equal reward, from housework to sex, and he’d never found an issue with it before, but now, for the first time in his life, Harry didn’t want that. 

Rather he wanted to be selfish. He wanted to be greedy. He wanted to take as much of Tom as he physically could; claw at him, pulling at every scrap he could, and cramming them inside himself. And while he didn’t want to admit it, Harry knew this was a feeling that Ginny wasn’t going to be able to satiate. He could glut himself all he liked on the feel of his wife against him, and her smell, and her taste, but all it would take was one glance from Tom across the breakfast table, and he’d be hungry for something else entirely. 

“Harry… please…” Tom mumbled now, the words blurring together on his lips and sticking uselessly to his tongue. He dragged his eyes open, though the lids were heavy, and his pupils were sugar-glazed, “ _please_ , Harry,” he said, “I know how much you want to,” he added with just enough bite between the syllables to remind Harry that, despite how fogged up with want his brain must have been, Tom was still aware of what he was doing, and Harry was inclined to just let him. To allow himself to sink into the mire of lukewarm water and burning hot skin and to do all the things that his rotten mind could think of.

But, before he could, there was a noise resonating through the house, slicing through the sticky silence like a knife through butter. It was cheering coming from the radio in the sitting room that was still blaring out the sounds of the game. For just one, brief, moment, Harry tried to ignore it, but years of surreptitiously listening in won out and he heard every word of the commentators shouting about Ginny Potter’s fantastic goal. And just like that, the guilt returned like a spring flood, pouring back inside his brain and gushing through every vein, until it made his blood run cold. His wife was out there, being her incredible self, expecting him to be listening in to her big moment, and he was here, in the bathroom, watching— _helping_ —his houseguest get himself off.

It was sordid. Hopeless. Entirely pathetic. 

And his head was swimming and his heart was pumping so loud, so heavy in his chest. Almost blindly Harry yanked his hand out of the water and slammed the bolt across and ripped the door open with so much force that it groaned with protest, and it sounded just like Tom. 

With the same vigour, Harry flung himself through the doorway, out of the intoxicating heat and away from the lure that was Tom—just a fishing hook that had snagged his heart and now dragged him down, trying to drown him. He slammed the door shut behind him, hard enough to shift the pictures on the walls, but he didn’t leave. _He couldn’t_. Not when there was this magnetism that kept him there, stuck to the wood as he listened to the breathy sounds that were spilling from Tom’s mouth mutate into one long, stretched out, groan; it was a filthy sound—an abhorrent sound—and one that rung around Harry’s ears like a whole chorus of voices were shouting it at him. 

He knocked his head back against the wall, caught between the cheers of the game and Tom’s heavy breathing; there was no denying it now, Tom was a really big problem.


End file.
